A Meeting With. Michael Armstrong,director of Roundhouse Digital

A Meeting With. Michael Armstrong,director of Roundhouse Digital

Article excerpt

Byline: Michael Armstrong

What is the best thing about your job? Working with such an exciting team who are always striving to deliver the most innovative solutions for our clients. They keep well ahead of the curve and are always enthusiastic to share what they have found and how they think it could be useful for our clients.

What is your proudest achievement? There's a number of key projects that have really shone, but delivering the first ever university website that was responsive always stands out. We had to persuade the university that response websites weren't just a passing trend or fad and that there would be a real benefit - especially in student recruitment and engaging with a younger audience.

What advice would you give to someone starting in your career? Experience is critical and cannot be replaced by academic qualifications. The first thing that I look for on CVs is if the person has had any real-world experience, unpaid placements or graduate schemes, anything where they will get to understand the commercial side of website development. You cannot just deliver what you want, you have to improve the business of your clients and these days a nice looking site is not sufficient.

Which individual has inspired you the most and why? As corny as this seems, but it has to be my father. He taught me from a very young age the important principles of honesty and integrity. That has seen me succeed in any role I've taken and was influential in my decision to take a role at The Roundhouse. These values are core in the business and the founders, Ian Humpish and Nick Pugh, made that very clear to me in the first interview.

What is the best piece of advice you have been given and why? "If you make a mistake, make sure you learn from it." I spent my early working career trying to be a perfectionist and letting it really affect me when something didn't go right or didn't go to plan. That would totally demotivate me - as if, if it wasn't going to be perfect, I wasn't going to play any further part in it.